Alec Baldwin’s Twitter rant hurls homophobic slurs

LOS ANGELES – Alec Baldwin went on a homophobic, profanity-laden online rant Thursday before shutting down his Alec Baldwin Foundation Twitter account, all in defense of his pregnant wife, Hilaria, whom a Daily Mail reporter had apparently errantly accused of tweeting while the couple attended James Gandolfini’s funeral.

Baldwin replied with screaming of his own — words of denial and retaliation that lit up Twitter on Thursday night and into Friday.

The “30 Rock” actor’s rep explained in a statement to Los Angeles TV station KTLA and other outlets, “It’s disgraceful that a reporter would manufacture and publish a story and not call for comment or explanation — especially when it’s intended to take away attention from honoring the memory of a beloved figure like James Gandolfini.”

Hilaria had denied the story as well, tweeting on Thursday afternoon, “FYI I don’t believe in bringing phones into a funeral and I never did and I never would.”

The couple had left “discreetly out a side door” about 45 minutes into the service, after the eulogies but before communion, according to Los Angeles Times reporter Meredith Blake, who was in attendance and noted it was extremely hot in the non-air-conditioned church. The couple’s child is reportedly due in mid-August, and sources told the Daily Mail the mom-to-be was “feeling faint.”

Some on Twitter noticed the byline taken off the Daily Mail story for a period of time and replaced with a “Daily Mail reporter”; it was then restored. They also noticed that the reporter appeared to have done his timestamp-math wrong, getting the times of the tweets on Hilaria Baldwin’s account wrong by failing to adjust for East and West Coast time zones.

In other words, the tweets weren’t happening while the funeral was going on.

However, damage had been done on both sides by then. In the rant, which has since disappeared along with the Twitter account, Baldwin called Daily Mail writer George Stark a “toxic little queen” and “lying little bitch,” and suggested Stark would enjoy forcible sodomy – specifically a foot up the rear. The actor also threatened to find the writer and mess him up, only in more profane terms.

“Someone wrote that my wife was tweeting at a funeral,” he wrote. “Hey. That’s not true. But I’m gonna tweet at your funeral.”

And while Alec Baldwin’s Twitter account was gone, his wife’s remained active.

“I don’t know what hurts more: people randomly and maliciously writing lies about you, or the people who actually believe them,” the 29-year-old yoga instructor wrote Thursday.

“My husband fights for me fiercely. It hurts to be misunderstood and it hurts to see your loved one in pain-even more so when she is pregnant,” she added in a series of tweets. “It is shameful the bullying that the internet allows for. ‘Reporters,’ ‘publications,’ and anonymous posters. Rage, greed and pettiness hurt. I hope that this reporter knows how much pain and drama he has caused from his poor journalism. Lying and bullying are shameful.”

And on Friday morning she offered what might make it right for her: “I would like a real apology,” she wrote.